SO it turns out that the demise of Arsenal Football Club was greatly exaggerated.

Their panache and ball-playing brilliance was not left locked inside a derelict Highbury after all.

Forget all the premature laments about a year of transition and a team that has lost its way.

And ignore the people who started telling Arsene Wenger that maybe it was time he lowered himself to winning ugly.

All those misjudgments died at Old Trafford yesterday along with the idea that the quest for the title was already a two-horse race.

After a three-game winless run that was fanned into a fullblown crisis, Arsenal are back and back with style.

They did not just beat Manchester United in front of their own fans. They embarrassed them.

United might have gone into the match scenting blood but by the time Arsenal had finished with them, they realised it was their own.

Their squad looks threadbare already and Sir Alex Ferguson made another in a long line of OAP decisions when he preferred John O'Shea in midfield to £18million summer signing Michael Carrick.

O'Shea looked desperately ordinary and with Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney - who looked ready to blow when Ferguson substituted him - unusually subdued, Arsenal went for the jugular.

They passed United off the pitch with a performance that stayed true to Wenger's purist ideals and all without the injured Thierry Henry.

"We were really disturbed after the World Cup," Wenger said after the match. "We had 14 players in Germany and it took us some time to recover.

"But I told the players to be faithful to the way we want to play. We just have to do better. You open the newspapers and you might think we were going to be playing in the Championship next year."

Little wonder then that Wenger shook both fists at the heavens in exultation at the final whistle.

Little wonder that he made a departure from his normal routine and strode on to the Old Trafford pitch to celebrate with his players.

It may be a little early for turning points but it will be a surprise if Arsenal do not quickly join Chelsea, United and, of course, Portsmouth, at the top. Their winning margin should have been wider than the 86th-minute strike from the outstanding Emmanuel Adebayor.

They should have taken the lead in the 11th minute when a sublime passing move ended with United stand-in keeper Tomasz Kuszczak upending Adebayor in the box. Gilberto Silva took the spot-kick but slipped as he took it and Kuszczak, on his United debut as a replacement for ill Edwin Van der Sar, pushed it away.

A minute later, United were indebted to Kuszczak again when he tipped a header from Adebayor on to the post before Paul Scholes kicked the ball away to safety. But Arsenal were not dispirited. They kept passing and they kept United chasing shadows.

Adebayor had his best game for the club by a country mile. Tomas Rosicky was mesmerising, too.

Far from being a team unsure of itself, Arsenal are in fact a gathering force.

Julio Baptista, a loan signing from Real Madrid, looked powerful and confident when he came on late in the second half.

Nicknamed The Beast in Spain, he seized on O'Shea's error near the halfway line and a direct run ended with a fierce drive that went inches wide of Kuszczak's left-hand post.

United had their chances. Ronaldo was denied when his piledriver hit Jens Lehmann full in the face and Lehmann denied Ole Gunnar Solskjaer late on.

But Arsenal should already have put the match out of reach. Still, when it came, the goal was a worthy winner. Cesc Fabregas dispossessed Ronaldo midway inside United's half and ran at their defence.

He got a lucky break when the ball rebounded to him off Ronaldo's shins and he threaded a neat pass through to Adebayor who poked it underneath Kuszczak.

"Transition is a word we don't want," Wenger said afterwards. "I believe in this team and today reinforces that belief."